Wonkblog has a series of charts that talk about the economic recovery. The entire series is worth a look, but I’d like to focus one chart in particular:

The thing that is striking about this chart (other than the fact that the total federal budget will be above 22% of GDP in 10 years), is that all of the OMG, THE BABY BOOMERS ARE COMING panic related to increased spending on Social Security and health care is matched by the increased interest payments we’re facing.

Somehow, the fact that we’ve accumulated an enormous debt that’s going to continue to rise (see Chart 9, “4.3.1 Federal Unified Budget Surplus/Deficit”) doesn’t seem to panic liberal pundits, even though it’s just as important to the budget as the entitlements for our aging population.

Related

The boomers’ attendant issues are each bubbles, demographic bubbles that merely needed temporary fixes.
But Obama has been using their bubbles to create permanent new departments and policies.
I think a purge of excess paper-pushers would do more to ease our budget problems than anything else.
That, and treat demographic bubbles as needed instead of as excuses to expand government forever.
Oh, and one more thing: stop scaring the public about cutting the rate of increase in spending. ….just make the cuts and see.